Page 4 of Bite Sized Bride
I do not react. I stand perfectly still as the guards come forward to chain me once more. They drag me from the chamber of horrors, back toward the cold and the dark.
Back in my cell, the door grinds shut, plunging me into familiar blackness. The scent of the minotaur’s blood is still on me. The ghost of his honorable defiance still haunts the air.
The emptiness inside me is a vast, dark ocean. And from its depths, something screams.
I open my mouth, and the sound that rips from my throat is not a roar of rage. It is a howl of grief for a life I cannot remember, for a name I cannot speak, for a soul that is no longer my own. It is the only thing I have left.
3
MIKANA
The summons comes an hour after nightfall. Not a written request left on my desk, but a sharp rap on the door of my small, windowless chamber. It’s one of the household guards, his face carved from the same impassive stone as the rest of them.
“The master requires your presence,” he says, his eyes looking through me. “In the lower sanctum.”
Ice trickles down my spine. The lower sanctum is not for scribing. It is for rituals. I have never been summoned there before. My work is with the dead and their artifacts, not with the living on their way to becoming so.
“My ledgers?” I ask, my voice a carefully constructed monotone.
A flicker of something—annoyance, perhaps—crosses his face. “You will not be writing tonight.”
He turns and walks away, expecting me to follow. I do. My feet are silent on the cold stone floors as we descend, leaving the opulent upper levels of the estate behind. The air grows colder, heavier, thick with the scent of damp earth and something else. Something metallic and sharp that catches in the back of my throat. Fear.
The sanctum is a circle of raw, black stone. Runes are carved into the floor, glowing with a faint, sickly green light. The air hums with contained power. Lord Malakor stands near a central altar, his back to me. He is dressed in ceremonial robes of black silk embroidered with silver serpents that seem to writhe in the shifting light. He looks serene, almost peaceful, like a priest about to lead a prayer.
Vexia, his personal sorcerer, stands to his left. Her platinum hair is a fall of moonlight against her dark robes, her violet eyes holding a chillingly detached curiosity. She is examining a set of wicked-looking silver instruments laid out on a velvet cloth.
In the very center of the runic circle, chained to the floor, is a man.
My breath catches. It’s Ren, a stable hand, barely a man at all. He can’t be more than seventeen. His face is pale with terror, his eyes wide as he stares at the instruments in Vexia’s hands.
“Ah, Mikana,” Lord Malakor says, turning. His smile does not reach his cold, indigo eyes. “You are just in time. I felt it was important for you to observe the process. To better understand the… provenance of some of the items you so diligently catalog.”
He is doing this for me. The thought is a shard of ice in my gut. This is a performance, and I am the intended audience.
“What was his crime, my lord?” I ask, keeping my gaze fixed on a point on the floor just to the left of his boots.
“He was accused of theft,” Malakor says, his voice smooth as polished glass. “A silver locket belonging to one of our guests.”
A lie. I saw the locket fall from the guest’s own pocket in the courtyard this morning. I said nothing. Saying something would have earned me a beating for my impertinence. Saying nothing has earned Ren a death sentence.
“Vexia will now… persuade him to tell us where he has hidden it,” Malakor continues, gesturing to the sorcerer. “TheSerpent values truth above all else. And pain is its most effective midwife.”
He steps back, moving to stand beside me. So close I can smell the expensive wine on his breath. He wants to feel me flinch. He wants to watch me break.
I will not give him the satisfaction. I build a wall of ice inside my mind, brick by brick, until I am numb. I focus on the details. The way the green light from the runes glints off the silver of the chains. The drip of water somewhere in the darkness. The frantic, shallow rhythm of Ren’s breathing. I am a scribe. I am an observer. I feel nothing.
Vexia picks up a long, thin needle. She approaches Ren, her movements fluid and graceful, like a dancer. “The locket,” she says, her voice soft, almost gentle. “Just tell us where it is, boy. It will be so much easier.”
“I… I didn’t take it,” Ren stammers, shrinking back against his chains. “I swear on the Mother’s name.”
Malakor makes a soft tsking sound beside me. “The wrong god, I’m afraid.”
Vexia sighs, a theatrical display of disappointment. “A pity.”
She drives the needle into the soft flesh beneath Ren’s fingernail.
He screams.
